• 1Jul 09

  Why losing LAN is going to hurt Blizzard more than it helps

  From the inception of the gaming industry, piracy has always been an issue. Nothing stopped consumers from going to their friends house and copying a floppy. It was fast, it was easy, and it was cheap. Nothing stopped you from playing your "pirated" copy of the game other than a manual check, which prompted you for some information on the manual. Unsurprisingly, the manual check was very ineffectual.

  Fast forward to today. Piracy is still an issue and nothing stops consumers from hitting up their favorite Bittorrent tracker and grabbing their favorite game. It is fast, it is easy, and it is cheap. What has changed? Absolutely nothing, yet publishers are all afraid of the cyber-buccaneers. While there certainly are more pirates today, that may be because there are more PC gamers overall today. If we could somehow get the real percentage of piraters who pirated floppy discs (which we unfortunately cannot) and compare it to the real percentage of piraters today, I doubt the percentage would deviate much.

  Lets start by examining some patterns.

  Look at The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It did not even require a CD-key to ensure that you own a legit copy, which was pretty much unheard of at the time. What was the result? It became the best selling PC game of its time [1]. Now I'm not a hardcore RPG Morrowind type of guy, but in my opinion Oblivion is a damn good game. It is the game that I play the most right now, and it even sits above Crysis and Demigod on playtime.

  
  Lets look at a more recent example, The Orange Box. It includes LAN, and it doesn't have any DRM other than Steam. What happened as a result? It sells extremely well, and the PC sales are significantly higher than console sales [2]. Do I even need to emphasize how good The Orange Box was? I'm pretty sure almost everybody who considers themself a gamer holds The Orange Box to some esteem.

  On the opposite side of the spectrum is Spore. Limited activations a la Securom forced you to sit through EA's hotline if you run out, while all the pirates out there are not required to sit through the reactivation or deal with any rootkits. The pirates got the best cut out of everybody and Spore became the most pirated game for its time [3].

  But you know what? EA learned their lesson and released Sims 3 without any intrusive DRM. Guess what happened? It is the "strongest PC game launch the company has ever had," [4].

  Even Prince of Persia (200 recieved some love for not including DRM. It had disappointing sales for the 360 and PS3, yet now it has sold 2.2 million. Where did the other sales come from? I don't know. The PC sales were not disclosed to completely solidify my point however. They also did not release the DLC for the PC, citing "business reasons" [5]. "Business reasons" could include sales but also could include the lack of a good PC DLC provider, or just Ubisoft being scared of the Ghost of PC piracy.

  The line is kind of blurry, but it plainly shows that hindering legitimate players from playing the game will make you lose sales. There is no question about it. Your game is going to be pirated either way, but including some sort of intrusive DRM is just going to add fuel to the flames. So lets return to StarCraft. I can say with confidence, that if Blizzard doesn't do a 180 on LAN, StarCraft II will be the most pirated game ever.

  Removing LAN is completely stupid. It is so stupid that I had to emphasize completely. One, it is pretty much slapping the face of loyal fans. Two, it is not going to work. Three, it will kill of their credibility as a consumer-based company forever. It isn't like none of these are very clear either. Blizzard has to know what it is getting itself into.

  
  Again, removing LAN in SC2 is like Blizzard biting the hand the fed them. StarCraft pretty much grew up on LAN. All major competitions play StarCraft on LAN. StarCraft was pretty much essential in any LAN party. Removing LAN would be excluding a major portion of StarCraft fans, many who are legitimate owners. Honestly, if you like StarCraft and you have never ever bought a legit copy, then you should set fire to your PC right now. It is pretty much blasphemous to call yourself a PC gamer but not own StarCraft.

  Any gamer past the age of 10 will know that all methods to keep out pirates will NEVER EVER WORK. Never. The pirates will crack anything you throw at them, so you might as well save yourself some money and stop trying. Piracy is like quicksand, the less you squirm the higher your chance of survival is. Removing LAN will NOT work. In fact, it might make it easier for pirates. Without LAN, Blizzard is pretty much just asking for people to set up pirate servers for illegitimate players to play. Without LAN, the only people Blizzard is hurting is its own fans.

  If Blizzard follows through, they are going to be dead to gamers. The exclusion of LAN is a spit in the face of legitimate players, just like SecuROM. Blizzard is on track to become the next SecuROM-EA of PC gaming, maybe even worst. The old EA just forced you to sit through an hour on a hotline to play your game legitimately. With Blizzard, you aren't ever getting a method to play LAN, even if you are a legitimate consumer.

  But out comes the excuses. "Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of Starcraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for Starcraft II in the near future." [6] This is absolutely outrageous.

  IF YOUR BATTLE.NET 2.0 WAS AS GOOD AS YOU SAY IT IS, YOU DON'T NEED TO REMOVE LAN TO GET PEOPLE TO PLAY IT. FORCING PLAYERS TO PLAY ON BATTLE.NET 2.0 WILL NOT MAKE THEM LIKE IT.

  I suspect Blizzard knows the above very well. Their statement was just a lame excuse to enforce a subtle method of DRM that will definitely NOT WORK. Blizzard is just setting up StarCraft II and their whole company to fail. Honestly, dividing SC2 into three games was already a cheap method of milking their fans. Now this. Blizzard will lose all my respect as well as many like me (a.k.a. non-fanboys) if they continue with this. I am not going to pirate it, but I definitely will not buy the game if LAN is excluded. I urge all of you to do the same. If you don't like what Blizzard is doing, do not settle for less.

  I love Blizzard. The fact that me and my friends can LAN is due to Blizzard and their games. But if Blizzard is going to deviate from their course, then I must show some tough love. If we don't speak up, they will assume that it is okay to bully us. Don't stay silent.

  
  Citations:

  [1]http://www.bethsoft.com/eng/news/news_2006.html

  [2]http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36952/The-Orange-Box-1-5-Million-Console-Sales-Significantly-More-On-PC

  [3]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091400885.html

  [4]http://gamasutra.com/news?story=23980

  [5]http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57048

  [6]http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212765.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1

  • Posted Jul 1, 2009 10:05 am GMT
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